06.03 EGYPT, Amarna, The Story of Achnaton

Achnaton: ‘I was born as a son of king Amenhotep III and queen Tiye, the beautiful one. Queen Tiye came from the land of Kem. Now it is called Ethiopia, the people of black. So I was a mixture. I had very black figures, outlines in my face. And I had a very long face. My body was like the bodies of the men of the land of Kem. Lean, supple and very long. With long sculls. I was considered to be a special child from my birth on and after my third year I was brought to the land of my mother, to receive the initiation of priesthood. Because in the land of my mother the matriarchal lineage of the priests, the priests of old Lemuria, were there. They had kept the old knowledge.

Although I don’t know that much of my early years, I remember that my parents where a bit worried about me. They wanted to protect me from possible murder. Because in these days the power and influence of the priests and the generals in Egypt was growing, and there was a lot of scheming.

My father was very influential, very powerful. He built an enormous empire and under his time the Egyptian empire was at its greatest. But at the same time there where dark forces doing their work. Dark forces were growing and we knew about it. This was one of the reasons why I was kept in, hiding, for the time when I could take the throne.

That day came when I was on my seventeenth to my eighteenth year. I got a message that the health of my father was declining and I had to take his side. So I came back to Egypt. Full of the knowledge and the wisdom of the old, the ancient. They had told me the power of the spirit, the power of the soul, the heart. But stubborn as I was, I wanted to do it my way. I would always be an exceptional one, in that I followed my own wisdom. That’s what they have told me. And that’s what I practised in my life. So when I came to the side of my father and seeing the enormous structure of oppression, the structure of priesthood, of religious fanaticism, I wanted to change all that. Not knowing what I would cause.

My intention was good. But I also learned during my life that you cannot force people to open their hearts or to reject oppression. Everyone chooses their own destiny. As I did too. Nefertiti was as young as she was beautiful – also a mixture from another land, from another tribe, another culture. We fell deeply in love and our connection was predestined.

We had ideas of how we could change our society and build a new city, on the banks of Amarna. Tell Amarna. A city that was based on love and on family life. As my father had built an empire that was strong – religiously and militarily strong – we wanted to bring back the heart to Egypt. For a brief period of time we were able to do that and the land flourished as never before. There was so much beauty, so much wealth, so much joy. And the evenings we have seen under the sun of Aton were incredible. There was a power in this fragile moment of time, where joy was abounded. But the dark forces that had grown during my father’s empire, were becoming stronger and stronger. And although we did our best to preserve what we had, it wasn’t long before the dark forces took over. They took back power. And I must say we couldn’t hold the love between us.

Nefertiti and I grew apart. She couldn’t stand my fanaticism, my righteousness of the heart. She liked the beauty, the wealth and the power more. While I was more strict, due to my upraising, I wanted to keep it simple, to keep it severe. So what happened in the end? She fell in love with the general and that made us grow apart. She had her own place, her own palace, and she sought connection with the priesthood and the generals of old Thebes.

Of course this was very hurtful to me. Very, very painful. And I withdrew. I couldn’t stay in my solar energy. At the end of her life, when she saw what she had caused, she had regrets. But the things were set in motion already and couldn’t be turned back.

So what happened was that the priests and the generals took over the power and they took our son, who was under the influence of his mother: Tutanchaton. And he became Tutanchamon again. He was a puppet in the hand of the priests. It wasn’t long before his life ended mysteriously. But it seemed clear that they had their hands in it.

I retreated more and more, with a group of people around me. We moved up north and we sought for a place in the desert. That’s where we stayed for a long time. We were in contact with the Jewish community and with a man that you called Moses. I knew him from the court, from the royal court, where he had his place. He was younger than me. He came for advice when he was young, while I was already an older man. He sought to learn the practise of magic and I taught him as I was taught. Because I could see the strong powers of leadership in him. I had hoped that he would become the new Moses, the new leader for our people. But instead he chose his role for the people he came from, the Hebrew tribe. And in his years he led his people out of Egypt, under the reign of pharaoh Horemheb.

I have most grievance, most pain for my daughters. All had to become princesses in the new reign. They were longing for my presence. I can still see beautiful years in the summer palace, on the bank of the Nile, where we had such a beautiful life together. It was a life of beauty and abundance. And I think that is still what I’m longing for, the simpleness of life as we had it, and the joy of our people. It is gone now, into the eons as memories. But they’re still very vivid in my heart.

When my end came, I travelled to the pyramids, knowing that my story would end soon. I didn’t want to be buried. They made a boat for me, a boat they could put my body on and burn. As I was sailing into the sea, the Mediterranean Sea, I was lain on a boat on the Nile. Sailing towards the sea, as I was sailing towards eternity. Aton was shining on for me, from the morning till the night, as I was burning up in flames, thus staying forever on earth in my soul identity.

Afterwards they have tried to erase the memory of our time. They changed history and the leadership of Egypt became much more military, pressing and ruling from the mind and the power. The religion as we knew it in the old times, was gone. Slowly the magic faded and nobody remembered the old ways of the ancients. Still the memory of this time is kept in some regions of the heart. And there will come a time when people will remember it again, when they will tell our story, complete and full. With all the beauty ànd the human pain that it involved. That time is your time. And it is your story.

So tell our story, so people know the truth of our lives. But more than that, so that they remember the truth in their hearts. That it’s not from power but from true love that everything will come into existence. Power is the energy of death. Love is the energy of life. Everyone on planet Earth has to make a choice between these two. What do you choose?’

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